The Law of Pareto and Parkinson, and Your Enterprise

May 24th, 2011

We’ve all heard about Pareto’s Law, otherwise known as the 80-20 rule. It states that as a percentage of time and effort that only 20% of your time will be effective, 20% of people earn 80% of all income, 20% of people will grow in your enterprise, 20% of customers account for 80% of sales volume, 20% of advertising yields 80% of the campaign’s results. So it only goes to say that you should be spending as much time with these 20%ers. There’s one hitch though. You never know who those 20% are going to be. So there are several strategies you can use to either expand that 20%, lower that 80%, or both. Let’s examine.

It only goes to say that in the networking industry, if you want to grow a thriving business, you need to spend 80% of your time prospecting. Anything less would label your enterprise as an amateur hobby. If you really are serious, you need to spend 80% of your available time prospecting. If you break down the steps of prospecting to the ridiculous, you really are only doing 3 things. One, talking to people you know or talking to people you don’t. Two, sending them to a message; website, webinar, conference call. And three, calling them back and enrolling them. You want to be doing these 3 things for 80% of the time you devote to your business.
So what other things can we do increase the rate that our business grow? We can become more efficient in who we choose to target in our marketing and connecting. Asking for referrals fall into this category. Ask for referrals from existing business partners to help them grow their business and from people that you know or are prospecting, even including people who have said no to the opportunity. There are various methods and scripts and strategies that you can use. If possible, try to find out what type of profession they are in. This will give you a clue as who to target. Professions that deal with sales, marketing, people, and networking are prime targets. But so are people who know lots of other people in their professions. A good example would be teachers, coaches, and nurses. Ditto to existing business owners. So you can increase the effectiveness of the 20% by spending your time focusing on people with large networks.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention another principal called Parkinson’s Law to the equation. We can expand the 20% also by understand and applying the concept of Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson’s Law states that the amount of work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Remember back in college when you had a month to do a term paper. 80% or more of the people waited to the last minute to complete them or even start them. So even though you had only a month to do it, you really only spent 2-7 days. In some cases it may have been even less. Why? Well you had to outline, had to research, had to refine your premise, had to draft, had to review, had to revise, had to finish final copy. You completed it. Well now what would have happened if your professor simply said on a Friday that you have a term paper due next Monday. If that grade mattered to you would you find a way to get it done? You would become laser focused. You would set priorities to spend your time in the most efficient manner. You wouldn’t be dilly dallying and getting ready to get ready. Come Monday you would turn in a paper.
Well folks, you can do the same with your business. I like to think of prospecting and recruiting as a sprint. When you are running full blast, you don’t consciously think through your mind that I need to lift my left foot after I push the ground and then lift my right foot when I do the same. No! You just go! You have to do that same thing when it comes to prospecting. You don’t need to think about that person who just said no. You should already be on the next person. But to do it over a long time you need to train just like an athlete. Try prospecting with 100% laser focus where nothing can stop you, for a period as long as you can. Do it as if your future and your business depend on it. You can do it in several chunks of time or intervals. Then try putting them together. Then put those together. I guarantee after one months’ time, you will be able to produce more in one week that the average person does in a month. Roger Bannister, the first person to run a mile in under 4:00 minutes used this principal and trained in 220 yard chunks the started putting them together and set the record. You too have a chance to set a record in your company.
Your results will speak for themselves. Then teach the people in your business about Pareto and Parkinson.

Finding My Right Brain

October 10th, 2010

Thank you for taking the time to read my new blog. I’ve explained the rational for the change of my blog and my new focus toward what I refer to as right brain thinking in both of the ABOUT THE SITE and ABOUT CHRIS pages. I think you will find the change pleasantly surprising.

All my life I’ve been pretty much a left brain thinker and have to come to realize that a common thread I really enjoy out of my past vocations, past blogs, and past businesses has been dealing with people. This is pretty much a right brain thing and I’ve chosen to focus toward that direction. I’m leaving most of the technical know how and training I provide to my clients and business partners. I’ve given away a lot of things over the last year including a 215 page book on traffic generating strategies.

The introspection I’ve had over the last year has led me to discover the real passion I have and that’s working with people, whether that be with my business partners or advising and consulting with new people I meet. That shouldn’t change any of my established relationships I have with people, including you, it’s just my focus is going to be on more right brained thinking arena. Since it is something I do enjoy writing more about, my content should be much more frequent and also relevant to everyone.

When I was writing about all the technical things I did, it got to be a chore that reminded me of my old Information Technology jobs. I would rather talk about observations and thoughts of people and other things that I find interesting, educational, and most importantly, humorous. So you will find that my new emphasis and focus is going to be on personal and business development, life and work balance, nutrition and exercise, and humor.

Again thank you for supporting me.

Historic Proportions

June 25th, 2009

Recently over at Facebook I had as a comment in the “What I was thinking today” section at the top the following, “Chris. W. Kilber is thinking that today is a day to make some history! What are you going to do today that you will remember for a long time?” I’m not sure what was in my coffee this morning or it must be the new vitamins I’ve been taking recently that has really fired me up and made me optimistic about a lot of things. Nicole Sundene then replied that it was empowering and a tall order. That may be, but was it the cost of success? Anyways, so then I happened to hear something on the radio dealing with the saying, “historic proportions”. It gave me an epiphany. I was thinking of something that could make a historical impact upon your online business, especially if you are just starting out or you started out following the wrong advice. Here is what I came up with.

There’s a lot of information written on online network marketing. There is so much in fact that it’s hard to separate the grain from the chaff. We as online marketers need to steer or coral potential business partners or customers into a position where we can educate and inform them to the services and offerings we have. How do we do that? We create a “marketing funnel” and attract people NOT by being a salesmen and touting the benefits of your product, but by building “YOU INC.”! I would bet that 98% of the products out there are being marketed by 1000’s of people. How can you be the one whom customers come? What you need to do is differentiate yourself from the others using attraction principals and move them into your funnel.

A successful entrepreneur will build their marketing strategies around processes and systems. They will build their own lists of prospects, customers, and partners by offering real world value. This may be in the form of information, how-to’s, time saving methods, insight, motivation, and other things that your list will value. As your list grows and they begin to gain your trust the potential products and services that you may market to them, which may be the same as others are offering, will have a better chance to be purchased from you. As time goes on you could even develop lists that number in the 10’s of thousands. By setting up your funnel properly and using an auto-responder you then have the ability to build your relationship with them with one simple email. As long as you continue to provide value, they will stay on your list.

It is imperative that you set up your marketing funnel as the basic marketing tool in your arsenal. Your possibilities are then endless once you know how to use this basic business building principles to grow your organization on the internet. By using “YOU INC.” as the attraction to your marketing funnel you will be able spin income streams with a variety of products and services. Once you understand this thoroughly and put it into place you will transform your profitability online. We all know that success begets success and imagine what you could do with 50-100 new opt-ins each and every day. How much would your business grow?

In closing, seek out what you need to learn, study it, implement it, and you will increase your online marketing success tremendously, maybe even to historic proportions. You can then thank Nicole for inspiring me to write this. What are you doing today that will be historical?